e socialists. For in the
second day of excitement, the mayor made public a plan by which the main
business street of the town was to be lighted with high-power lamps and
turned into a "brilliant white way of Schenectady." The swiftness with
which the papers displaced the gruesome details of the little girl's
death by exultation over the business future of the city was a caution.
Public attention was shifted and a political crisis avoided. I tell this
story simply as a suggestive fact. The ethical considerations do not
concern us here.

There is nothing exceptional about the case. Whenever governments enter
upon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick is
practiced. In the Southern States the race issue has been thrust forward
persistently to prevent an economic alignment. Thus you hear from
Southerners that unless socialism gives up its demand for racial
equality, the propaganda cannot go forward. How often in great strikes
have riots been started in order to prevent the public from listening to
the workers' demands! It is an old story--the red herring dragged across
the path in order to destroy the scent.

Having seen the evil results we have come to detest a conscious choice of
issues, to feel that it smacks of sinister plotting. The vile practice of
yellow newspapers and chauvinistic politicians is almost the only
experience of it we have. Religion, patriotism, race, and sex are the
favorite red herrings of foul political method--they are the most
successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those
unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet for
all its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is one of the high
selective arts of the statesman. In the debased form we know it there is
little encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen angel, and when
God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants. It is always a pretty
good working rule that whatever is a great power of evil may become a
great power for good. Certainly nothing so effective in the art of
politics can be left out of the equipment of the statesman.

Looked at closely, the deliberate making of issues is very nearly the
core of the statesman's task. His greatest wisdom is required to select a
policy that will fertilize the public mind. He fails when the issue he
sets is sterile; he is incompetent if the issue does not lead to the
human center of a problem; whenever the statesman allows